For the first time since the Kosovo conflict began, credible evidence emerged yesterday of a case of systematic rape committed by Serb troops, after the victims crossed into Albania and began giving their accounts.

Over 300 ethnic Albanian women arrived with their children at the border crossing in Morine on Monday night. UN officials said many were hysterical and in a state of shock.

Yesterday they told humanitarian officials, war crimes investigators and journalists that Serb soldiers had imprisoned them for three days in three houses in Dragocin, near Suva Reka, turning the village into a rape camp.

Counsellors from the UN children's fund interviewed them yesterday. Penelope Lewis, a Unicef spokeswoman, said: 'By all accounts, they went through three nights and three days of hell.'

Earlier in the conflict, Nato declared that Serbian military bases had been used as rape camps, but the claim was never substantiated. Since then, there have been sporadic claims of sexual abuse, but no corroborated reports of systematic rape.

Ms Lewis said: 'I haven't come across anything like this. This is a large group of women who all come from the same place and tell the same story.'

She said many of the women were worried they might be pregnant and were anxious about the reactions of their husbands, most of whom are now with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Unicef counsellors will take some to see gynaecologists today.

According to the women, Serbian police and troops moved into Dragocin last Tuesday. The young men fled. Elders over the age 60 were the only males left. According to the women, 11 old men were marched off and not seen alive again. Several said they later saw the body of one of them, Sherif Trolli, lying in the open.

'The women were all pushed into three houses,' said Hyrvete Trolli. 'There were so many people in each room, we slept one on top of another.'

Seven women questioned yesterday gave near-identical accounts of what happened. At night, they said, Serb soldiers came with torches and shone them in their faces, choosing the young and the pretty.

'Over 20 girls were taken from our house,' Mrs Trolli said. 'They came back half an hour or an hour later. They were crying. Some said they had been raped. With others, we knew they had.'

The women in the other houses also said that between 20 and 30 girls had been taken in the course of the three days to houses occupied by Serbian troops.

In a refugee camp in Kukes, young women sat silently at the back of family tents, refusing to speak.

Two young women, however, were prepared to talk. One, Y, 23, said she had been picked out on two consecutive nights. On Tuesday she said she was raped by a soldier in an empty house. 'If I'm pregnant, I'd rather be dead,' she said.

The next night she was brought to a house full of soldiers. 'They made me take off my clothes, and they smeared me with body oil and touched me all over. Then they made me serve them coffee,' Y said.

'Then all the soldiers left except the commander and one soldier. The soldier lay along side me on a bed, while the commander sat on the couch and watched,' she said. 'The soldier touched me, and I was crying and he kept saying: 'Don't cry, don't cry.' He didn't have sex with me, and I was allowed to go back.'

Joanne Mariner, a Human Rights Watch investigator, who interviewed Y, said: 'She's very credible. She was obviously upset. She had great inhibitions about talking about it, but she went through it all.'

Another young woman, H, said she was dragged into a house occupied by Serb soldiers. 'They were looking for my father. I said he had been taken away, although he is with the KLA. They asked how old I was. I'm 17, I said.

'They took my ring and watch and they hit me in the face and then ' at this point she wept and waved us away. Her hands were clenched and thrust deep in her lap.